Ramboll Acquires K2, Aurora Expands into Chilean Market

This week Allen, Phil, and Joel discuss Ramboll's acquisiton of K2
Management, Sumitomo Corporation's acquired stake in EEW Offshore
Wind Holding, and Aurora Energy Services acqusition of Altitech
Blade Services. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email
update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored
by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather
Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the
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show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting -
https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech -
www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech.
And I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro and
the chief commercial officer of WeatherGuard, Joel Saxum. And this
is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at
IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue,
then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. Danish
engineering firm Ramboll has acquired K2 Management, a wind and
solar energy consultancy. This move expands Rambl's global wind
division to over 900 people across 20 countries, including a new
presence in Vietnam, Thailand, and Portugal. The acquisition is
part of Rambl's strategy to grow its wind business to over 1, 000
people by 2025, enhancing its ability to provide services across
all stages of wind energy projects globally. Now, Phil. Why the
push to get into places like Vietnam and Thailand and Portugal at
the minute? Philip Totaro: Well, it's interesting because they're,
K2 has done a really good job over the years of doing a lot of
owners engineering services and other consultancy services around
project development, particularly in these kind of emerging
markets. So, you And Ramble historically has gotten a lot of feed
contracts doing, some of the EPC basically scope of work and, and
design work on Offshore sites the fact that they would fold K2
management's capabilities in with what they already have is, is
going to provide the combined company the opportunity to get a
wider scope of work from a lot of these, particularly a lot of
these emerging markets where. In an emerging market, you want to
turn key service provider. This gets them one step closer to, to
doing that. Joel Saxum: Yeah, this, to me, this is a huge
acquisition in the space. If you're in the offshore wind space or
in the wind space in general, and we're just talking wind, not
solar and everything else that both of these companies do two big
players, you're joining up. So it, like Phil said, you're going to
have a full suite of capabilities in a lot of parts of the world,
because there's parts where K2 operates where Rambo doesn't, or
where K2 has made inroads and Rambo hasn't. Allen Hall: In Germany,
EEW Group has reorganized its business into three holding
companies. Japanese firm Sumitomo Corporation has acquired a stake
in one of these, EEW Offshore Wind Holding. This holding company
focuses on the monopile business and associated mechanical
engineering activities. This partnership aims to secure EEW's
position as a global market leader in offshore wind foundations.
And Phil, there's a lot of work happening in foundations at the
minute and a lot of movement in the business world about that.
Philip Totaro: Yeah, and, and for Sumitomo's benefit they have a
lot of contracts to do, both foundations and to partner with other
companies to do topsides on offshore substations in particular. So,
like we just talked about with with Ramboll and K2 getting
together. And having kind of complementary capabilities. This is a
similar thing where Sumitomo obviously already has some presence
in, in monopile fabrication, but EEW is without a doubt the, the
global leader here. And EEW is also establishing themselves in the
United States. They're looking at the Brazilian market. They're
looking at other markets globally where they can, they can position
themselves. Having Sumitomo's backing helps make that a lot easier.
Joel Saxum: As the offshore wind sector grows whether it's fixed
bottom, whether it is the new, the new frontiers of floating.
There's going to be a lot of work here, right? So we have talked in
the last few weeks in the podcast about a couple of, another
Spanish company kind of get that. So a leader in the space as well.
What people don't understand. I don't think when they see pictures
of these transition pieces, monopiles, and there's other things
offshore. Is that the size and scale and the scope of engineering
that goes into these things is a massive and the interactions
between, being in the water column, being in the air having some of
it submerged under, in different geotechnical formations of mud
bottom, sand bottom, rocky bottoms, all these different things. It
is a very, very complex part of the offshore wind piece that we
don't see that much. And if you're not involved in offshore
infrastructure, and then you don't really pay too much attention
because you don't even see it. But the, it is going to be a huge
part of the industry as we move forward and build out our offshore
wind fleet. Allen Hall: Aurora Energy Services, a Scottish
headquartered company, has expanded into South America by acquiring
the Latin American assets of Altitech blade services. This gives
Aurora a presence in Chile with operations in Santiago. Aurora has
already secured two significant projects in Chile and aims to grow
its Chilean business to 5 to 10 million dollars annually with
around 50 employees over the next three years. The company, which
currently has a global workforce of approximately 700 employees and
a forecast annual revenue of 95 million dollars, is also exploring
opportunities in Asia Pacific and South Africa. Bill, the, the
Scots are reaching out all over the world Philip Totaro: with wind.
They are. And this is again, kind of a fascinating deal from the
perspective of, Aurora obviously already has a presence in kind of
other industry verticals and has been kind of dipping their toes in
the water with tidbits of work that they can get in, in renewable
energy. But it's also fascinating from Ultitech's perspective
because they obviously still have their presence in the UK and
other global markets, but to sell off the Chilean business is, is a
bit of a fascinating move, I guess, because, Chile's a growing
market and I don't know if Ultitech really had the resources
necessary to be able to tackle what they want to be able to
accomplish in that market without, the backing of somebody like
Aurora so I think it's, again, it's a good play on, on their part
and it gives them access to a few projects, as you mentioned but
there's significantly more potential there because it's a lot of
these South South American markets are highly fragmented in terms
of where they're getting their service from. Some of it's coming
from OEMs, some of it is independent service providers, and there's
a handful of companies that have tried to go it alone and operate
and maintain their own assets. So, the fact that Aurora can step in
with an ISP play that they can, bolster their, their position in
the market where they, they are potentially poised to take
advantage of any OEMs that are not really getting the job done on,
on the assets that they have. Or the owner operators that have
chosen to self perform. Joel Saxum: If Aurora seems like a name
that you've heard before, and if you're in the wind industry,
especially, specifically in blades, it may be because Aurora, as
they're growing here by acquisition, Also acquired Kotec IRM out of
Houston a couple years ago. So that's the Aurora Kotec company, and
they're a big player in the, in the blade space on a global basis.
I know they do a lot of work in Brazil as well. So you can see
Aurora Energy coming from Scotland, like we said, spreading its
wings by acquisition and, of course, organically to grow all over
the world to be a big player in the blade world.